


Zero Gravity

by theprophetlemonade



Series: Droplets and Ripples [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Drabble, Droplets!verse, Fluff, Gen, Implied Aquaphobia, JeanMarco Week 2014, M/M, Marco PoV, Pining, Pool Boy AU, Swimming Pools, Zero Gravity Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 07:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3759025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprophetlemonade/pseuds/theprophetlemonade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco is so in love that it's getting painful to watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zero Gravity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hachidorikun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hachidorikun/gifts).



> Originally posted as Tumblr exclusive on 27/10/2014. 
> 
> This serves as an insight into the Marco POV of Droplets, and is loosely placed between CH 9 and CH 18, although I do not specify when. Just enjoy Marco's thirst and Marco's pining.

Jean laughs. It’s like a bark – short and sharp and brisk, but filled with canine-like amazement at what he’s managed to do. This is the deepest he’s ever made it into the pool. His cheer is pretty infectious, judging by the way I feel a smile squeezing its way onto my face, pulling the corners of my lips upwards in a way that feels almost unnatural these days – genuine smiles are a Jean-only thing, I guess.

Not that I’m complaining, of course. Watching his eyes light up – copper-brown and beautiful in the blazing sunlight – when he sees me grinning at him, is special.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he tries to scold, but the words lose their edge as they’re pressed through an ecstatic smile. He can’t help himself.

The sky is a brilliant blue above our heads – clear and cloudless, with the lazy taste of summer; even the swallows darting beneath the rafters of the Kirschtein house flap their shapely wings languidly. The heat isn’t stifling though – not like most Trost days when the rusty smell of the city seems to weigh down the breezy air. There’s something about the gentle warmth sweeping over our skin that makes me feel, perhaps not at ease, but at _peace_. Like things feel right.

“Looking like what?” I tease boldly, sifting backwards through the water, coaxing him to follow me – and he does, with barely a whisper of hesitation. There’s a spark of coldness up my spine when the pool water laps the small of my back – a sharpness against the gradient hue of summer feeling in the idle air, but it passes quickly as I wade deeper. Jean follows, waves licking at the hewed lines of his hips jutting over the waistband of the swim trunks I bought him. The colour looks better on him now, as he’s started to catch the sun; the red doesn’t wash him out so much anymore.

Jean doesn’t exactly reply – but I’m used to accepting a bashful string of mumbled grumbles as a more than eloquent response from him. I still understand him perfectly well – the blush rising in his cheeks assures me that.

He moves to splash me, flicking his fingers along the rippling surface and launching a splattering of droplets into my face. I play at shielding my eyes, but my grin grows wider. It speaks volumes about how proud I am – that’s the look on my face, mainly. Pride. He’s come so far.

But … but it’s not just pride, of course.

We drift deeper into the clearness of the sun-comprehending water, and maybe I’m too obvious in how my eyes drift back to the line of wetness slowly creeping up his body – maybe he notices – maybe I  _want_  him to notice.

I glance quickly back up to his face, but no – he’s lost. His hands hang limply at his sides, drifting weightlessly through the water as he takes slow, meandering steps; the look on his face is that of a man relishing a feeling of childlike wonderment.

I wonder what it must be like, to be feeling the water as if for the first time anew. There’s still a hitch in his gait, still a tremble that tenses his shoulders, but it’s become negligible in the past few weeks, and here, now, he lets his fingers sift, parted, through the water like it’s nothing to him.

Not treacle, or thick tar, or a consuming darkening dankness that he had once described it as (and I quickly resented) – but air. But nothingness.

He smiles to himself again, a quirk of his lips as he fascinates over the refraction of his skin beneath the gently lapping surface, which leaves me breathless. It’s the sort of moment which I’ll pin to memory and which paints itself prematurely with the colours of nostalgia, far before I’m looking back on it as a memory of a magical summer.  The water licks at his navel, swirling over pallid, white skin, and God, do I think about swiping my wet fingers over wetter flesh. Skimming my hands up and over his sides, dragging trails of dew over his ribs, guiding him gently back against the blue-mosaic wall of the pool, pressing my thigh between his legs, and—

_Marco, no. You’re in a whole pool full of water – how can you be this thirsty_?

Apparently my conscience has not had a gratuitous eyeful of the way the silver studs in his collarbones  _gleam_  in the bright light bouncing off the water, and make me want to press my lips around them even more.

Oh Marco.

You’re so  _in love_  it’s getting painful to watch.

I let myself fall back into the water, it cradling me as I submerge myself up to my shoulders. Jean’s eyes flick back to mine, and I manage to hold his gaze for a moment longer than he’d normally allow me, before he drags copper-brown away again, staring more purposefully at the way his hands float floppily at his thighs.

I watch a tremble shiver through his shoulders, a nervous twitch in his jaw which makes my stomach twist uncomfortably. We’ve come so far – but we’re not quite there yet.

I think that applies to a lot of things regarding us.

I don’t know when I started holding onto the sliver of courage that there could be something – because up until recently, it’s always been a fantasy. I don’t exactly know what’s changed, or when it changed, or if it’s me, or if it’s him—

Maybe it’s everything. A combination of all the drips and drops of things I love about him have finally caused the ripples to spread far enough … that when I look him in the eyes, I see …  _something_. Something that pens the shreds of lust and love and hope.  _Hope_ , above all things. Haven’t had much time for  _that_  in a very long time.

I sink down lower, risking the very real danger of inhaling chlorinated water straight up my nose, but it’s mandatory to conceal the very fierce blush that must be painted as clear as a sunny day all over my face. I purse my lips and blow out some reticent bubbles beneath the gentle rolling waves of pool water, which make the surface seem to simper.

Jean’s watching me again, and it makes my face burn. Just like  _everything else_  he does. Him just looking at me, him just mentioning my name in passing conversation, him  _existing_ … all elicits the same sort of response of wanting to slip below the surface of the pool and just  _not_.

Not do  _this_  anymore.

I can say that with as much sincerity as I can fool myself into mustering, but it means very little. I wouldn’t give this up – I wouldn’t give up what we’ve become over these last few months of summer. Because when I compare back to that very first day – and remember the sense of weightlessness that rushed over me just at looking in his eyes as I shook his hand – I’d rather be us, with the endless, abyssal pining that comes with it all, than be nothing at all.

My love for him is both an anchor and the blade that cuts the tether.

Supposedly staring relentlessly at the person you like doesn’t really take the number one spot for efficient methods of acquiring a boyfriend out of the son of your employer, though.

But once you’ve thought about how their hand would feel in yours, or how their face looks when you wake first in the morning, or how their breath would come short and hammered when they’re pressed up against the pool side and at mercy to your kisses—

Well, then you’re completely and utterly ruined.

Jean splashes me again, and this time I don’t react in time, getting an eyeful of pool water, effectively breaking the moment. He grins wickedly, a flash of white canines, and looks proud of himself.

“Hey there, space cadet,” he quips, as I smear my pruning fingers beneath my eyes to clear my skin of the speckling of stinging water drops. “Are we gonna do this swimming thing or not, huh?”

It’s not even a false sense of bravado – like the kind he hides behind when he’s out of his depth, in all senses of the world. This is real.

And I guess my reality now, is a dose of patience. Seeing him this happy kinda makes it all worthwhile, though.  I look at him, and I think it terrifies me – it terrifies me the things I would suffer for him, if it was asked of me.

Not that this is suffering. Far from it.

Here, with him, everything else is able to float away. And despite us – or the possibility of  _us_ – or my probably naïve optimism that  _us_  might have even crossed his mind—

He is enough. 


End file.
